Project Overview: Any manufacturing organization is faced with a number of programs which it must implement to be successful. One major program focuses on
quantity, and policies must be in place to effectively manage capacity
and work in progress. Another major program centers on quality, and
policies must be in place to decide what, where, and when to measure,
and how to interpret and respond to the resulting data. Supporting both
quantity and quality should be an equipment maintenance program.
Policies must be developed to decide the most appropriate manner in
which to perform preventive and emergency maintenance. And of course,
the quantity, quality, and maintenance policies must be cost effective
to meet the business goals of the manufacturing organization.

The first difficulty in each of these areas is deciding among the many
policies available. To mention but a few - quantity management could
employ "Kanban", "Theory of Constraints", or "Hedging Points", while
quality management could follow the advice of Deming or Crosby or Juran
- and so on. Furthermore, in some specific factory, given its particular
resources and goals, a hybrid of standard policies might be most
appropriate. The second difficulty for the manufacturing organization
is to assure that the policies that it selects - one each for quantity,
quality, and maintenance - are synergistic. For example, while policy Q
for quantity management looks appropriate and policy M for maintenance
seems desirable, Q and M may clash in undesirable ways when mixed in a
specific factory.

The ultimate outcome of this project is a tool that would support an
orderly solution to both difficulties. Given the particulars of a
specific factory, various policies, hybrids, and modifications could be
evaluated in isolation for each of the quantity, quality and
maintenance, areas, and then combinations of quantity, quality, and
maintenance strategies could be assessed for positive and negative
interactions. The desired tool would necessarily be easy to use. The
target audience would include factory managers and their staff including
the quantity, quality, and maintenance managers (and their staffs and
technical support). The required tool is not intended primarily for use
by universities or corporate research laboratories, although the tool
should be of use of research personnel as well. While the tool is aimed
at operations, it might also be useful for factory design.

Research Projects: The four research proposals described in the following pages address a few of the basic issues that require resolution before the desired tool can be implemented. While each of the projects has a deliverable, each also facilitates further work on related basic issues.